The light grew dim as the gray pall of the storm quickly overspread the sky. The dull gray light made the sea appear queer and dark, with the great heave now running quickly, as though a mighty power were working close behind it. The tops of the breaking combers had a peculiar lift to them as they met the cross-swell, and the racing of the starboard engine became more and more violent. A terrific squall bore upon the ship, seemed to almost lift her bodily before it. The roar of the wind whirling through the heavy standing rigging told of its velocity, and then we waded right into the thick of it, with the Prince Alfred lurching along eighteen knots an hour over a sea which was torn into a white and gray world that ended, so far as our vision was concerned, a few fathoms from the ship's side.
Boldwin was standing on the bridge, holding to the rail, and leaning to the blasts as though it took his whole weight to bear up against them. I came close to him.
"Get every one ... below! Lock in ... passengers!" I caught his words with my ear ten inches from his mouth. "Cover ... hatches ... all fast."
I knew what he meant. When the Prince Alfred closed down her cargo there was something unusual happening. Making my way down the bridge steps, I got the men of the watch together. It was tough work, for the sea was now ugly, and we were running our weather-rail down at each roll, and scooping up plenty of water which she sent across her decks to leeward. To stand up without holding on meant to be blown bodily against the lee rail at the risk of going over.
It was an hour before I got back to the bridge, and when I did so, the squalls were becoming more frequent, and more and more violent, but there was no shift yet. It soon grew dark—a black dark—and we tore along into the blackness, unable to see two fathoms ahead. As yet we were outside the Stream, and consequently not in the usual line of the coasters, which are the dread of the liner's officers, for nothing is so uncomfortable as the sudden raising of the dim and sometimes half-extinguished lights of a schooner on a thick night while tearing along before a gale. Having the right of way, the sailing vessel has nothing to do but keep her course, while the steamship, with but a few seconds to spare, swings quickly to pass, sometimes missing a catastrophe by a few feet. A poor red light on such a night cannot be seen twenty fathoms.
Before midnight the shift began. It came from the southward—a bad sign, for it told plainly that we were nearing the center of the disturbance; and as we were heading diagonally across the path of the storm, we were almost certain to bring up in its dread vortex. As chief officer, it would have been a bit out of place for me to suggest the thing the ordinary seaman would do—that is, heave to and work out of it. Boldwin stood on his bridge and kept her going.
And yet it had to come. Before daylight the sea was terrific—the squalls coming with furious rushes, shifting, and hurling a frightful sea. A huge, lifting hill of water broke high above the taffrail, and roared a full fathom deep over the quarter-deck. The crash shook the steamer through her whole frame. It was as though she had struck a solid rock. The white glint of the foam showed through the blackness, but the dull, thunderous roar drowned all other sounds.
Boldwin went to the speaking tube in the pilot house, called to the chief engineer to stand by to heave her to and watch the engines as she came into the trough.
"We'll have to stop her," he said; and I nodded assent.
In the pilot house the clanking of the steam steering gear sounded dully in the deep, sonorous undertone of the gale outside.